Кримінальний процесуальний кодекс України в умовах воєнного стану: новели, ефективність і виклики правам людини

It is indicated that the large-scale military attack by the Russian Federation became a powerful incentive for the urgent update of the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine (CPC). Already on April 14, 2022, Law No. 2201-IX was adopted, which supplemented the CPC with a special section IX-¹, including the important article 615. This innovation enabled reserve judicial bodies to extend preventive measures and conduct court hearings in a remote format in cases where traditional courts were destroyed or relocated as a result of hostilities. The article puts forward a comprehensive procedural model for wartime criminal proceedings that guarantees the expeditious conduct of investigative actions without infringing fundamental human rights. The amendments to Article 615 of the Criminal Procedure Code detail five mutually reinforcing mechanisms: (1) a dual-advocate procedure with explicit judicial “screening” of classified materials; (2) a time-bound, 60-day rolling review of state-secrecy markings; (3) gender- and child-sensitive interviewing standards—including a “friend-room,” video-recording of the first interview, and mandatory psychological support; (4) compulsory digital capture of all key investigative steps in forensic-image format with dual SHA-256/512 hashing, storage in WORM repositories, and an immutable audit trail; (5) TLS/SRTP-secured remote procedures backed by two-factor authentication. A comparative analysis of Polish, Lithuanian and Croatian wartime procedural regimes isolates a minimal European standard capable of combining short-term (≤ 96 h) liberty restrictions, a network of “reserve” courts, and full video-recording with guaranteed defence access. Particular attention is paid to digital evidence: the proposed technical architecture (forensic image + WORM + audit trail) preserves authenticity and admissibility before the ICC and any future special tribunal while remaining consistent with Articles 6 and 8 of the ECHR. The model demonstrates that modern electronic-evidence preservation technologies, integrated with progressive de-classification procedures and gender-friendly approaches, can strengthen the rule of law during armed aggression.